Smoked Tri-Tip Roast

[Lord_Byron]

When I was in L.A. a couple of years ago, they were selling tri-tip sandwiches at a street fair. Since then, I've always had it in the back of my mind, so on Sunday I decided it was time to throw a roast on the smoker.

I got a three pound tri-tip at the butcher that was trimmed of its fat cap. It's a fairly lean and flavorful cut of meat, but can get tough if it's overcooked. I really had two options for smoking, either a hot smoke at 350 degrees or a low smoke at 250. Given that I wanted to maximize the time in the smoke, I went for the low smoke, figuring that it would take about two hours to cook.

I made up a simple rub of salt, pepper and garlic powder and liberally coated the roast. Left it on the counter and set up the WSM with about 1/2 chimney of unlit coals and about 20 lit coals. Used two good size chunks of apple and one hickory for smoke wood.

Put the roast on with a probe thermometer set for 140 degrees. The smoker ran a little hotter than I wanted at about 260 on the lid thermometer, so I shut two of the bottom vents completely and left the other at about 50%. That seemed to do the trick.

After about an hour and 20 minutes, the thermometer went off. Let the roast rest for about 1/2 hour in foil and sliced razor thin against the grain. Stacked up a nice thick sandwich on Kimmelwick for Lady Byron and me, and a plain roll for the Princess.

Man, was it good. Flavorful, juicy with a nice smoke flavor.
Made for a pretty sweet Father's Day dinner given that the golf tournament sucked.

I'm really loving my smoker. I think I'm going to do some major smoking over the holiday weekend coming up. We're going to NYC this weekend, so no smoke for me.

Next time, I'll take some food porn pictures while I'm cooking.

[Pete Segaard]

You really need to start including photos of the product.

[hammb]

Glad you're loving the WSM Byron! That's what I use and I absolutely LOVE it as well

Never done a tri-tip though. I know it's big in Cali, but I haven't seen it around here. I'm sure a butcher could get me some, but I wasn't sure what the price would be on it. May be worth a shot sometime.

I don't usually use the smoker for stuff like that, I should do that. For me when I pull out the smoker it's usually for ribs, brisket, or pork shoulder. I grabbed a whole chuck roast on sale at Meijer this week. Sometime I wanna smoke that for shredded beef. Never done that, but it should be tasty

[h2oville rocket]

I think I'm going to do some major smoking over the holiday weekend coming up.

Dude, me, too.